Scaling a Jovian colony

ToughSF links Jay Eaton's worldbuilding, this "world" being whatever Jupiter anchors. Eaton doesn't mention the E/G Laplacian but he's welcome to it.

I find interesting that most people here will be on a station; this "Nexus Jovia" is in the JCL5 halo. It fits, er, 89 million people. Jensen thought he could squeeze almost 70 million into Šteins' 6ish km / 1.98e14 kg if reassembled into a torus, (4042,1915,638). "Realistically" he figured 5.79 million. (And he'd start at Atíra anyway, like me.) Jupiter has lots of asteroid-captures bigger than Šteins, like Themisto (9 km); Jovians wouldn't even need to construct this thing from Callisto.

I do agree with Eaton that the (vast) majority prefer to inhabit a station permanently, where gravity is what you make it; than to inhabit Callisto or beneath Ganymede permanently, where you're stuck at, what, about a tenth Earth's. Low-gravity is bad for you mmkay.

Anyway, even if Eaton's population-numbers are absurd, because science-fiction, he's only absurd by a single magnitude-order: Jensen is still talking millions. And there's all the water anyone could want, out here; ammonia too, I reckon.

Next problem: power. Jovians get only 50.26 W/m² from the Sun; the Lunar antarctic 80s° might count on 1361. Maybe Ganymede can handle things with a superconductor. If the colonists are in the millions then Callisto, and JCL5, gotta import power. So does my interlunar Laplacian.

Eaton reckons that Amalthea can anchor some magnetic tethers, and beam the microwaves outbound. Personally I was pondering dismantling Amalthea as to shield Io with its rubble. But maybe Amalthea can spare the mass, and keep enough leftover for the beaming. Maybe Io can plunder Thebe first and spare Amalthea.

BACKDATE 10/22